[MSN] Campaign to save nation's £1bn paintings

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Campaign to save nation's £1bn paintings

By Nigel Reynolds, Arts Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:56am GMT 24/01/2007

# In pictures: Best 25 paintings in private hands

The 25 most important paintings in private hands are named today amid growing concern that they may be lost to the nation because rising auction prices will tempt their owners to sell.
	
Self-Portrait by Rembrandt, Paintings campaign
Rembrandt: Self-Portrait

In a campaign to keep the best of Britain's heritage in the country, Lord Howarth, a former arts minister, called on the Government yesterday to revive its secret Paramount List —a list of works of art so important the Government would step in to buy them for public collections if they ever came on the market.

Lord Howarth told The Daily Telegraph he wanted to protect objects of "supreme importance" as a matter of urgency. Experts should prepare a small national inventory of no more than 15 paintings and a small handful of sculptures and pieces of furniture that the Treasury would guarantee to buy for the nation at market prices.

In parallel, the latest edition of Apollo, the specialist art history magazine, will publish a list tomorrow of what it considers the 25 most important Old Masters in private ownership in the country. With a value of at least £1 billion in today's market, almost all of the pictures are owned by "Old Money" and have been handed down through the generations of Britain's most prominent families.

Though recessions, taxation, stock market crises and personal misfortune caused the break-up of many country houses during the 20th century, some of the wealthiest aristocrats hung on to the family silver.
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Prominent among the owners are the Dukes of Sutherland, Buccleuch and Queensbury, Devonshire and Westminster. The Duke of Sutherland owns the largest collection outside the Royal Family — some 500 major works.

Only three paintings on the list are owned by "New Money" — a Canaletto bought by the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber for £10 million in 1992, a Joshua Reynolds desperately wanted by the Tate but bought by the Irish tycoon John Magnier in 2001, and a Cézanne bought by the London diamond retailer Lawrence Graff for £1.3 million in 1989.

One of the paintings, a Leonardo valued at at least £40 million, is missing. It was stolen from the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensbury's Scottish castle three years ago and has not been recovered.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/